Don’t let nimbler law firms bake your cake and eat it!

Each year I carefully review Interbrand’s excellent report on the top 100 global brands. No professional service firm brands feature there so you may well ask, what relevance do these largely commercial or corporate brands have for law firms? The reason I do is that Interbrand provides useful summary reports as to why these brands consistently outperform other brands and grow in value and we can learn from them.

Message from the top global brands – simply carrying on as we always have and hoping it will suffice, won’t work – nimbler brands will bake our cake and eat it – Sean Larkan, Edge International

First though, a few quick pointers in regard to brand (which are expanded upon in my book (no plug intended!)):

our brands are what other individuals think, not what we think (based on principles developed by Marty Neumeier in the Brand Gap);

we need to ensure that what we say we offer, we actually deliver (brand fusion™);

there are at least three types of brand we should be aware of – organisational brand, individual brands and our employment brands – each have their peculiarities and potentially, great value;

building a high value brand takes a whole bunch of highly talented people working together as a team i.e. your whole firm, legal and support.

Here are the points from the Interbrand report which I thought would be of interest to law firms:

through the influence of social media brands are increasingly shaped by clients and others, and less by organisations themselves;

design is no longer low priority – it is now the key to a brand’s appeal;

corporate citizenship is no longer a nice to have or ‘add on’ but a palpable ethic that must weave right through an organisation and radiate outward – some law firms are doing a great job of this;

a message we have heard before, but a reminder that the marketing rules have changed – the consumer’s voice now carries much more weight;

simply carrying on as we always have and hoping it will suffice, won’t work – nimbler brands will bake our cake and eat it;

something else we have heard often enough before but don’t really seem to heed – the new world involves engaging actively with our clients;

as Apple (presently the top global brand – a cool $100b) has taught us,

brands can change lives, not just with products, but through an organisation’s ethos;

brands can enable us to do more, more easily, and for us to truly experience and believe this;

customers value a company with a reputation for revolutionising how we work and communicate;

it as an organisation thinks differently, which we like, and seems to deeply consider the customer experience (us);

. . . . . thereby building trust and charisma, resulting in a leading brand for which users feel there is no substitute (i.e. charismatic);

As a result brand is more than ever, a top leadership issue, not something to simply be delegated to marketing;

In an upcoming article on ‘NewLaw’ my colleague Jordan Furlong and I will highlight a number of law firms (mainly small and mid-tier) in Australasia who are doing something different and often special in the way they deliver service, and clients seem to be responding. I believe a number of them are well down the road to following some or all of the principles set out above.

About Legal Leaders Blog

Legal Leaders Blog's aim is to establish an interactive dialogue and exchange of useful information and expertise with like-minded legal industry professionals, leaders and managers about strategic issues of importance to all of us. This will assist us all to take the lead rather than follow the dynamic and evolving changes taking place in our industry.

The definitive plain-English guide to developing and understanding brand strategy for law firms of any size.

About Sean Larkin

I’m a partner with global legal industry consulting firm Edge International. Based in Australia, I look after the Australasian, Asia-Pacific and Africa regions. My passion is the legal industry, in particular assisting law firms, legal entities and in-house legal departments to realise their full potential and position them for success and development. My mantra is a simple one—building strength, confidence and well-being.